1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to the field of semiconductor manufacturing processes, more particular, to methods for dopant activation within silicon-containing films forming semiconductor devices, such as gate electrodes.
2. Description of the Related Art
As smaller transistors are manufactured, thinner gate dielectric material is needed to enhance device performance. However, the carrier depletion contributes about 4 Å to inversion oxide thickness gate electrode material, such as p-type polysilicon doped with boron or n-type polysilicon doped with arsenic and/or phosphorous. Reducing the poly-depletion has become critical to maintain the device performance. Conventional processes include a rapid thermal annealing process which has a thermal budget limitation. For example, temperatures higher than 1,050° C. are undesirable since boron penetrates through the gate dielectric material to degrade device performance and reliability.
Ultra shallow source/drain junctions are becoming more challenging to produce as junction depth is required to be less than 30 nm for sub-100 nm CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) devices. Conventional doping by implantation followed by thermal post-annealing is less effective as the junction depth approaches the size of 10 nm, since thermal post-annealing causes enhanced dopant diffusion. Dopant diffusion may contaminate nearby layers and cause failure of the device.
Activating the polysilicon gate electrode without causing dopant diffusion is a major challenge for front end of line (FEOL) processing. A tight balance exists between enhanced dopant activation and aggregated dopant diffusion. An aggressive activation anneal may lead to high carrier concentration, but the dopant may be driven into the gate dielectric layer or even into the channel region. The balance becomes more difficult to maintain as device makers try to overcome poly-depletion. Poly-depletion is a reduction of activated dopants within the inversion region of a polysilicon layer. Poly-depletion accounts for an increasing fraction of Tox-inv (carrier concentration/poly-depletion) as gate lengths and gate dielectric thicknesses become smaller. For substrate features within the size of 130 nm and 90 nm, conventional thermal processes such as rapid thermal processing (RTP) and spike annealing are the main dopant activation methods. The resulting poly-depletion contributes 4-5 Å to Tox-inv. An additional reduction of 1 Å of the poly-depletion is necessary for a substrate feature with the size of 65 nm. Drive current gain of about 3% is expected with each angstrom of poly-depletion reduction. Conventional thermal processes are not capable of annealing such small substrate features without provoking dopant diffusion. In addition, preventing dopant penetration and use of thermally sensitive high-k materials requires low thermal budget activation anneal.
Laser anneal, which can achieve high dopant activation without driving dopant diffusion, has been developed to meet the requirements for poly-depletion for use in 65 nm features. Laser annealing technology produces transient temperatures near the silicon melting point within a few milliseconds, which results in high dopant activation with little dopant diffusion. This is a particular benefit for a process such as boron activation, since boron diffuses much faster than does phosphorous and arsenic. However, laser anneal temperatures that melt the silicon has been shown to cause polycrystalline grain size growth which may result in device yield loss.
Therefore, there is a need to have a process for doping polycrystalline layers within a feature and subsequently annealing and activating the doped polycrystalline with minimal or no dopant diffusion.